Conrad Black, the disgraced media tycoon convicted of fraud and obstructing justice, is due to find out today if he must return to jail in the US to serve some or all of the remaining four years of his prison term.

the fraud convictions of Jeffrey Skilling, chief executive of the collapsed energy giant Enron, were based on overwhelming evidence and "harmless" errors by the trial judge do not warrant giving him a new trial, an appeals court has decided.

A US appeals court has upheld fraud and obstruction of justice convictions against Conrad Black, the disgraced media mogul and Conservative peer, who now faces the possibility of a return to prison, three months after being released on bail.

Holed up in his Palm Beach mansion, an unrepentant Conrad Black has broken his silence for the first time since his release from prison with a paean to the virtues of fine wine, his wife, Barbara Amiel, and the pleasures of "pristine quiet, free of loudspeakers, screamed argument, and the snoring of a hundred men".

Conrad Black, the disgraced media mogul, has been told he cannot return to his native Canada to await a new verdict on the fraud charges he faces, because he hasn't provided enough detail about his muddy financial affairs.

Free at last! Well almost. It is not exactly Nelson Mandela emerging from Victor Verster Prison. The former media tycoon Conrad Black, known to his admirers as Baron Black of Crossharbour and to his enemies as prisoner 18330-424 of the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida, has been granted bail after serving two years of his six-and-a-half year jail term.

Conrad Black, the peer and former proprietor of The Daily Telegraph who was jailed in 2008 for fraud, has been granted bail by a federal appeals court in the US. He will now be released from Florida's Coleman Federal Correctional Complex while an appeal court reviews his conviction.